Cultivos Marinos Lago Yelcho wants to expand its operations in Central Chile
The new area is at least 650km away from Puerto Montt, where most of Chile’s salmon farming licenses are given. Recently new aquaculture concessions were given to BluRiver SpA – controlled by Blumar – to farm salmon in Magallanes near Antartica. The Bío Bío region is new to salmon farming.
But that’s not stopping the company Cultivos Marinos Lago Yelcho from investing a total of $ 14 million in five salmon farming projects there. The locations are: Isla Santa María, Punta Coronel, Espolón, Delicada and Hualpén. Each of them is estimated to cost US $ 2.8 million according to the Chilean news site Diarioconcepcion.
The application is currently going through its environmental assessment phase.
The company said that it intended to operate 16 rafts and circular cages (40 meters in diameter and 20 meters deep) on the south west of Caleta Pulga on Santa María Island (Coronel), to carry out the growing phases.
The objective is to obtain an annual production equal to or greater than 35 tons on each site The same is intended to be installed at Punta Espolón and Punta Delicada.
The company plan on using technology from Norway’s mort removal and bio-security, Lift Up.